Stan Mikita suffered from dementia for several years, so his death at 78 was not unexpected, just delayed.

But the imprint the wondrously talented Blackhawks center left on hockey as a player and an innovator will live forever.

The curved stick. Mikita invented that.The helmet. Mikita became the first superstar to wear it proudly and didn’t care what anyone in a vicious game said or thought.

The ability to change his style six years into the NHL and extend his glorious career to a 21-year run that landed him deservedly in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

He was a lesson in greatness.

A member of the 1961 Hawks team that produced the organization’s last Stanley Cup until Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews decided enough already, Mikita still reigns as the Hawks’ all-time scoring leader. His 1,467 points, for perspective, are 639 more than Kane. He finished with more than double Toews’ career total so far.

Mikita also reigns as the franchise’s all-time leader in assists with 926 , more than Kane has points. Like Kane, Mikita was a magical stickhandler. He could bring the old Stadium to a roar with those slick hands, deftly dishing the puck to a linemate who might not have known he was open.

He also scored 541 goals when he wasn’t looking for his teammates.

And speaking of those hands, the 5-foot-9, 169-pound Mikita used to be a fierce and willing fighter. Three times in his first six full seasons, Mikita rang up at least 119 penalty minutes and recorded 97 and 94 in two of the others.

And then it stopped. He stopped fighting. He stopped the stick-swinging. He just stopped the nonsense.

After a season of 154 penalty minutes, he went down to 58 and then 12 and 14. In those last two seasons, he played hockey and played it so well that he won the Hart Trophy awarded the league’s MVP, the Art Ross Trophy that goes to the leading scorer and the Lady Byng Trophy that is given to the most gentlemanly player, the kind of magnificent hat trick that not even Wayne Gretzky could match.

It was during that time that Mikita changed the game with the curved stick and the helmet.

Wearing the helmet was an act of survival. He was only 5-9, after all, and he wasn’t dropping the gloves much anymore. Helmets became mandatory less than two decades later.

The curved stick was an accident. Mikita told the story that he broke his blade slightly during a practice and didn’t feel like going to the bench to swap it out. He continued practicing, and suddenly the puck was flying everywhere, most notably at Hall of Fame goalie Glenn Hall’s head. This was different. Something was happening.

Afterward, Mikita jammed one of his new straight sticks under a door, shoved some books under the blade to bend it, and came back the next day to find it a weapon that would alter the game’s look forever.

He brought the stick to practice, and now the puck was really ammunition. Bobby Hull wanted in on whatever the little Czech kid had going. It was so crazy, Mikita told me, that Hall left the ice one time.

The whole league got in on it, and man, you should’ve seen some of those banana blades. The NHL finally put a limit on the size of the curve, but the curve wasn’t leaving, and still hasn’t.

Another thing about the man: He had a mouth as sharp as his shot. During the unveiling of a sculpture celebrating the Hawks, Mikita saw me walking to the ceremony and, knowing I’d written some hard words about the franchise and its ownership, said, “They let you in here?’’

Years before his death, Mikita was recognized with a statue of his own, the captain’s C on his sweater, the puck on his stick, his head up, his body ready to make a move. The sculpture captures Mikita. And it doesn’t. A sculpture couldn’t possibly capture all of that man.